Pomona College will hold its 120th Commencement Exercises on Sunday, May 19, at 10 a.m., on Marston Quadrangle (located between 4th and 6th Streets in Claremont). During the ceremony, approximately 385 members of the Class of 2013 will receive their undergraduate degrees.

Walter Isaacson

Walter Isaacson, president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan educational and policy studies institute, will serve as the principal speaker. He is a former chairman and CEO of CNN and former editor of TIME. In 2012, he was selected as one of the Time 100, the magazine's list of the most influential people in the world.

Isaacson is the author of Steve Jobs (2011), Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007), Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003) and Kissinger: A Biography (1992), and co-author of The Six Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (1986). He began his career at The Sunday Times of London and then moved to the New Orleans Times-Picayune/States-Item. He joined TIME in 1978 and served as a political correspondent, national editor and editor of new media before becoming editor in 1996. He was named chairman of CNN in 2001, and then president and CEO of the Aspen Institute in 2003. He is the chairman of the board for Teach for America; vice chair of Partners for a New Beginning, a public-private group tasked with forging ties between the United States and the Muslim World; and from 2009-2012, served as chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and other international broadcasts of the U.S. From 2005-2007, he was vice chair of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. He is a graduate of Harvard University and of Pembroke College of Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

Ranney Draper, Pomona College Class of 1960 and a philanthropist; and Sharon L. Camp, Pomona College Class of 1965 and president and CEO of the Guttmacher Institute, will receive honorary degrees and address the audience during the ceremony.

Ranney Draper founded Diversified Shopping Centers in 1966, which developed over 75 commercial shopping centers in California and the West. He sold the business in 1998 and became involved in philanthropy with a focus on issues related to the educational achievement gap. He and his wife, Priscilla, established the Draper Family Foundation at the Orange County Community Foundation and then launched and funded dozens of programs with the OCCF and United Way to help at-risk students succeed in school and to improve access to college. He is a significant supporter of AVID (Achievement Via Individual Determination) and helped establish a program to assist low-income, high-achieving students access private universities and colleges with high levels of financial.

A member of the Pomona Board of Trustees for more than 25 years, Draper's generosity has benefited Pomona, its students and surrounding communities in profound ways. In 2009, the Draper Center for Community Partnerships was named in honor of Ranney and Priscilla Draper in recognition of their key role in establishing a number of educational outreach programs at Pomona, including the Pomona College Academy for Youth Success (PAYS), a comprehensive college-access and academic skills building program, and Pomona Partners. The Drapers generosity has also supported a number of other important programs and projects on campus.

Sharon Camp is the president and CEO of the Guttmacher Institute, the leading policy research organization in sexual and reproductive health and rights. Prior to leading the Guttmacher Institute, she served as the president and CEO of Women's Capital Corporation, a start-up responsible for the development and commercialization of Plan B emergency contraception and as senior vice president of Population Action International. She was also largely responsible for bringing together the highly successful International Consortium for Emergency Contraception. The author or co-author of more than 70 publications on family planning and related subjects, she has chaired the boards of Family Health International, the National Council for International Health, the International Center for Research on Women, and the Reproductive Health Technologies Project. She has served as an elected director of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA), AVSC International, Management Sciences for Health and Population Action International, and currently serves as a senior lecturer in the Department of Population and Family Health at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. In addition to her Pomona degree, Camp holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University.

Emeritus Professor of English Thomas Pinney is in the news for a remarkable discovery: 50 "lost" Rudyard Kipling poems, captured in his upcoming publication, The Cambridge Edition of the Poems of Rudyard Kipling.

"I’ve seen how summer research allows students to gain command of an area in their chosen discipline, and carry the confidence and excitement from that experience forward in their undergraduate careers and beyond."